DescriptionThe Southampton Rebellion (Nat Turner's Rebellion) erupted in Southampton County, Virginia, in the late summer of 1831. The death of nearly sixty whites at the hands of slave rebels shook Old Dominion to its foundation and left a nation in shock. The historiography concerned with the rebellion focuses largely on the character of the rebellion’s purported leader, Nat Turner, and the larger political impact that the rebellion’s outbreak had on both Virginia and the United Sates. But what would a focus on enslaved women do to our understanding of America's most famous slave rebellion? This dissertation explores the ways that African American women's lives and experiences provide a unique vantage point from which to interrogate the African American community's longstanding culture of resistance and the labor economy that shaped all of the lives of those who resided in the county. Attending to African American women's lives allows for a narrative of the rebellion not as the history of one great man and his vision but, rather, as a narrative of a site of resistance produced by an entire community of African Americans.